


Anamnesis

by evilmouse



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Guilt, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21670078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilmouse/pseuds/evilmouse
Summary: After the events of theJedi Nightepisode, Hera is haunted by half-remembrances of her Imperial captivity.
Relationships: Hera Syndulla/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 16
Kudos: 55
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Anamnesis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JessKo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessKo/gifts).



> Mind the tags. Hera was canonically drugged out of her mind in the referenced episode of _Rebels._ The result: she is a willing and satisfied participant/instigator of the implied sex in this fic. She's still very much a victim, but if that combination squicks you, you've been warned.

Waking up screaming was preferable to this alternative.

Hera rolled onto her back, looking up at the cabin ceiling. Her throat was dry, eyes aching in their sockets. Kanan shifted gently beside her, but slept on. For that she was grateful. 

Biting her lip, she stared at the blackness above, trying to visualize something--anything--to push recently surfaced memories back where they came from…

Her subconscious wouldn’t cooperate.

When she was lucky, her dreams were of a sharp-faced, cruel woman in grey. Hera’s hands flexed at her sides, the sense of impotence and futility flooding back.

Pryce had _hated_ her, more than could be justified by simply fighting for opposing sides. The Governor had mocked her shrieks, barely asked any questions. Hera could easily recall that superior, disinterested voice. Pryce was a true sadist, relishing the infliction of pain. Those large blue eyes had rounded, rapt, when her victim writhed and spasmed at the press of a button. Imperials were truly a breed all their own--petty, merciless, and often stupid. Hera lumped the governor of Lothal into these categories. 

Yes, Pryce had gleefully contributed to her torture… That part of the ordeal Hera remembered with holo-like clarity: flashes of jagged electricity, jolting from restraining binders and into her bones; the pitiless interrogation droid, burning and probing with needles that tested how much agony one nerve ending could withstand.

Those horrific recollections were the flashbacks Hera welcomed, far better than the other scattered images that her subconscious had judiciously buried. 

Definitely preferable to the alternative.

Because the alternative was _him_.

Hera squeezed her eyelids shut, battling to stifle the sporadic memories so artfully hidden within her heart. She couldn’t escape Thrawn’s blazing eyes--that steady, blood-red simmer. They scorched like a brushfire in Ryloth’s Bright Lands, promising wanton, indiscriminate destruction.

Why did she remember the flame of his gaze so precisely?

Hera was afraid she knew.

The drugs had made her pliable. That was what Hera kept reminding herself. She had _not_ been given a choice. 

Now, her only recourse was to forget. Yet her persistent, ordered brain was attempting to rob her of that option. Shameful visuals flashed behind her eyes at the most inopportune times, uncaring of place. Awake and asleep, Hera was powerless to channel or suppress them.

Imperial bastard.

His voice... His voice had something in common with Pryce’s. Both were velvety, confident. But Thrawn had that subtle edge, that thinly wrapped menace that carried the force of authority and strength of command. He would not be denied. 

Her lekku twitched against the pillow. 

He’d _touched_ her. Hera shuddered, muscles contracting at the unwelcome admission.

The back of his finely veined hand had grazed along her lek. Too gently. The recollection was confusing, offensive. He should have clamped to subdue, squeezed to hurt, not caressed it like a lover. Twi’lek anatomy had been a curiosity to him. 

Beneath the thick blanket, Hera curled up into a ball, disgusted. It didn’t matter what specifics her brain vomited up, distance hadn’t brought objectivity or acceptance. Instead, she suffered nausea at splintered memories and pointless self-reproach.

The IT-O had pumped her with all manner of truth sera, including skirtopanol. Pryce had masterfully doped her into a toxic mixture of insouciance and recklessness. Had that brutal woman guessed what her art-loving colleague intended? Somehow Hera doubted it.

She could still feel the coarse pads of aristocratic fingers, like phantom shadows that ghosted across her skin and vanished just as quickly. Thrawn had traced the line of her neck, the smoothness of her jaw. He had probed her forehead and scalp with too much interest to be clinical. His hands had drifted delicately, deliberately. Her sensitive organs fascinated him; the Admiral’s appreciative touch lingered even now, weeks later.

A shiver that wasn’t entirely unpleasant wracked Hera into sudden stiffness. The _Ghost_ ’s recycled air was sterile and cold. She pulled the covers up to her armpits. That was a little better, but the temperature wasn't the problem. Invisible, half-remembered hands, stroking her to mindless fever, dominated her still.

Hera winced as an embarrassing warmth bloomed in her belly, spreading lower. She glanced to the side. Kanan slept. He didn’t know. 

She would never tell him.

The first week after her rescue, she barely remembered anything at all. Some nights were interrupted with amorphous terror, imagined danger, and disjointed hallucinations. A nameless, residual unease lingered, but Hera had been able to dismiss it as typical--expected. Trauma could cause all manner of reactions and stress, after all. And Kanan’s presence in her bed was a comfort; he understood what it meant to be a prisoner of the Empire.

But one night, the dream that disturbed her was of a different brand: deep blue skin, blinding white teeth, and the sound of her own pleasured gasps. Hera awoke frantic for breath, lungs unable to extract enough oxygen from the air. Her chest was tight, thighs trembling and slick. Reality felt distorted. 

After the first shock of recall, the specter of Grand Admiral Thrawn haunted her like an incubus. His influence came in unpredictable stutters of sensation, terribly vivid and blissfully brief. 

These tormented worse than the neural echoes of her physical torture.

Visions of the past still lived inside her. Like a holo puzzle, every nightmare brought her closer to the full picture.

Rough lips on her sweat-speckled neck. A greedy tongue, sweeping a path of pure ecstasy along her lek. The voice, that maddening silken mixture of threat and taunt, directing, encouraging. 

The words didn’t matter.

She woke up wet.

More pieces of the puzzle came as the nights since her liberation grew in number. Sleep had never felt so worthless, so lonely.

Hera didn’t _want_ to dream in color, but she did. Indigo, black, white--so much _white_ \--crimson and gold. 

She dreaded sleep as time marched forward, when her selective amnesia was particularly relentless. She could taste it--the pressure of lips on lips, of tongue against teeth against tongue against throat.

The worst part was knowing she had instigated it.

The kalikori. That was all Thrawn had seemed to care about. He'd been obsessed, incessant questions indicating this went beyond personal genealogy. He saw her heritage as a weapon, although how and why, Hera couldn't begin to imagine. A distraction had been the logical tactic, the best way to protect her family, her honor, their history, her pride.

It had made perfect sense at the time. 

Hera woke up panting too often during the week that followed--skin aflame, body tense and wanting. Kanan’s arms intensified her misery as he tried to calm her, offering an ear, a shoulder, a kiss. She endured silently, at once grateful and throbbing with humiliation.

He would never know.

She hadn’t had a choice.

So why had it _felt_ like a choice? Hera's heart tried to confess what logic refuted. For some reason, protecting her family heirloom had been imperative--protecting her own dignity had not.

Thrawn...had been unexpectedly receptive. He had promised her things, in that maddening voice that said he already knew all her secrets. And she had believed him. 

She’d been drugged.

When he started his “analysis,” of her tchin, Hera had fought desire. Hate helped, subsumed her body’s natural reaction. But Thrawn was too observant. Too patient. 

By the time he had finished tactilely mapping her tchun, she had been desperate for him. Trembling. Begging.

Hera hadn’t thought him bold enough to take advantage.

She had clearly underestimated Thrawn’s interest and depravity…and her own lack of control. Her unforgiving subconscious had retained it all--every foul, explicit detail--and would continue to ruthlessly, inexorably reveal it bit by painful bit. Hera was subject to the whim and malice of her own psyche, and there was nothing she could do about it. 

Someday, she would have all the pieces. She would remember more than just the satisfying weight of him, the exotic taste of his lips, the sleek feel of his cock. She would remember more than the violence and intimacy that she'd stoked and accepted. 

Someday, she would remember liking it.

Drugs. She’d been _drugged._

Kanan snored once, a light, uneven exhale. It was a reassuring sound, a familiar sound. Hera rolled once more to the side, slipping an arm beneath his and settling her front to her lover’s back. He woke, as she knew he would.

“Hey.” Calloused fingers threaded in hers. A gentle tug brought her hand closer to his chest.

“Hey,” she answered with a sad smile.

“Bad dream?”

Placing a soft kiss on his bare shoulder, Hera snuggled deeper into the pillow. Her stomach was in knots, her heart pounding. Kanan could never know.

“Yeah.”

“Better now?”

His question was muddied with sleep, but full of the love that she relied on. 

“Much,” Hera sighed, daring to close her eyes again.


End file.
